Category Archives: Tea Production

Tea Harvesting

Tea Plucker in Assam by Diganta Talukdar CC-BY-2.0

For centuries the only way to harvest tea leaves was to hand pluck them, and in many countries that is still the primary means of harvest. This may be intentional or may be due to the lack of capital necessary to purchase the equipment. For those farms who chose to use modern agricultural equipment there are multiple options from which to choose that can be implemented at various points in the harvesting season. For example, in Japan, some farmers choose to hand pluck the first flush of a season and use mechanical means for subsequent harvests.

Tea does have a harvesting season, though the length and number of flushes varies widely. In China it is typically in the spring and fall. As mentioned in our earlier blog Camellia Sinensis, season is effected by water, location and temperature. During a harvesting season the tea is usually picked once every week to two weeks. In places where harvesting can occur year round, during the peak season, the tea can be picked multiple times during a week.

As you can imagine plucking tea by hand is very labor intensive work where typically, the bud and first two leaves are plucked. In regions of China, on top of plucking the tea leaves, the pluckers are hiking up and down mountainous terrain to get to the leaves. In some of the oldest farms, the pluckers are also climbing into the old ungroomed tea trees to pluck. Pluckers will carry some kind of means to collect leaves as they pluck, often a bag or bamboo basket. They will add leaves as they pluck and when full they carry their harvest back to the farm before returning to the fields to keep plucking. In many countries women make up the predominant portion of the plucking workforce. In China, this is driven by the belief that women have just the right touch in plucking leaves, not leaving the tea tree brushed or damaged at the breaking point. This is extremely important for future harvests, because the tea tree will not continue to produce leaves on a branch where it is bruised or damaged.

Tea Harvesting by Machine by Oli Studholme CC-BY-2.0

Knowing that the tea tree is sensitive to where the plucking occurs, it is hard to imagine how big farm trackers or automatic pruners could to the same job. However, the Japanese have implemented laser technology to allow their automatic pruning machines to be hand-pulled over the tea trees with cuttings sucked into either bags or shoots that go back to the main staging area for the plucked tea. This laser guidance allows the pruners to cut at just the right place and angle so the tree continues to grow from the same branch. Since oxidation begins immediately after harvest it is critical, especially for green tea, to start the manufacturing process as soon as possible and this system allows much faster transport of leaves to processing facilities. I imagine that other countries, like Sri Lanka, which are experiencing labor shortages on their tea farms as younger generations leave the farm for jobs in the cities, will eventually turn to this technology to allow harvesting to continue.

While many countries still utilize substantial labor to harvest tea, Argentina plantations almost exclusively use large elevated tractors that drive above the tea trees to harvest tea leaves. Machine harvested leaves don’t usually have the bud and two leaf combination but individual leaves instead, some with and some without stems. Given that the plantations in Argentina are able to harvest year round, it is not a surprise that they use equipment.

Mechanically harvested tea is not always destined to tea bags. Quality loose leaf tea can be harvested by machine, you will just not see a bud and two leaves in the tea. Instead you will find single leaves and buds and in some cases no stems on the leaves with an almost perfectly straight edge at the base of the leaf. As for whether plucking by hand or machine effects the quality of the end product, it is hard to imagine that it does. Of course, I am just an American that is accustomed to John Deere tractors harvesting everything from oranges to wheat, so why not tea?

by Hillary Coley

Follow me on Twitter @HillaryColey or @DominionTea

Why are there no tea plantations in the US?

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You would be forgiven for believing that there are no tea plantations in the United States. Aside from China, Japan, India, Sri Lanka, and Kenya there aren’t any other suitable locations for growing tea right? If you read our earlier blog about where tea is grown you will note that the US does indeed grow some tea, though at very small quantities. That got us thinking… Why is it that American farmers never took up tea? After all, tea does grow at a wide range of elevations and latitudes. Much of the continental US from North Carolina and Tennessee southward lies at about the same latitude of Shizuoka prefecture, which leads Japanese tea producing regions. So why is it that tea isn’t generally produced in the US? Perhaps the most significant reason dates back to an 1897 report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in which the author, William Saunders writes “At the lowest estimate, it costs about eight times more to pick one pound of tea in South Carolina than the prices paid for the same service in Asia.” (Saunders, 1897) This one sentence appears over and over as justification for why tea isn’t produced here in America. In short, it’s too expensive to compete with the cost of labor in Asia. A hundred years later this thought process is strikingly familiar, with Asia continuing to produce all kinds of things with dramatically lower labor costs. But is the lower labor rate really the reason or, as the report also suggests, might it have been the shortage of skilled growers and manufacturers was the real stumbling block to getting tea off the ground in the U.S.

Historical Events from the Civil War to 1900.

US History Timeline Surrounding the Tea Farm Experiment

At the time of the USDA study there was significant upheaval in the United States where the Civil War was still very much on the minds of the population. The American South, which arguably had the better climate for Tea, was struggling to rebuild, had suffered substantial loss of capital, and struggled to adapt to an economy not based on slavery. Indeed, a report from the Debow’s Review, a widely circulated magazine of the time, published in October 1867, made it quite apparent that landowners felt the freed slaves “have ruined many Southern planters who had but little capital and endeavored to work their plantations on shares.” (Debow, 1867) With the US Agricultural scene adapting to producing crops without slave labor, the idea of introducing a new agricultural product that required manual picking of leaves and a manufacturing process that was still foreign to the US would be laughable.

The current focus by many US consumers on locally grown or raised produce, wine, and cattle might give tea yet another chance in the US economy. There are a number of tea growers in Hawaii producing specialty teas including Black, White, Green, and Oolong varieties. Back on the mainland, there is one commercial operation in South Carolina where tea has been grown and abandoned multiple times since the 1800’s. More recently the US League of Tea Growers has been formed in an attempt to bring together growers from across the country to share knowledge, develop best practices, identify or create cultivars suitable to the U.S., and to promote the U.S. tea industry.

As we close out this blog it’s important to take away that there is tea being grown and produced here in the United States. Over the coming years there may be greater availability of specialty tea products from across the country. Perhaps tea does have a place in the American agricultural economy and perhaps, all those years ago, folks should have more fully read the fateful report for the USDA considering “Dr. Shepard stated that if he were twenty years younger he would plant 500 acres as rapidly as he could procure the plants. This indicated his faith in tea raising as a profitable industry.” (Saunders, 1897)

What do you think? Is there a place for American produced teas? If they were more expensive, yet locally produced from a farm you could visit, would you seek them out?

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Works Cited

Debow, J. D. (1867, October). Agricultural, commercial, industrial progres and resources. Debow’s Review.

Saunders, W. (1897). An Experiment in Tea Culture, A Report on the Gardens of Dr. Charles U. Shephard, Pinehurst, S.C. Washington: United States Department of Agriculture, Division of Gardens and Grounds.
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Camellia Sinensis

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All true tea comes from the same basic plant, camellia sinensis. It doesn’t matter if its green, white, black, oolong, or puerh, they all start from the same source. True tea is made from the leaves and leaf buds of the Camellia sinensis not its flower. C. Sinensis does ineed have flowers. They are small white flower with six to eight petals and a yellow center_{(Harvard University, 2013}. The seed of the plant is about 1 cm in diameter, the same diameter as a wine cork, although round. C. sinensis is an evergreen plant growing from sea-level to almost 7,000 feet above sea level.

Plucking Tea Leaves – By Ashwin Kamath
CC-BY 2.0

Camellia Sinensis Varieties

There are two main varieties of this plant that make up the majority of tea consumed on the planet, C. sinensis var. sinensis and C. sinensis var. assamica. Var. sinensis is the tea plant originating from China. Var. assamica is the tea plant originating from India, yet there are many cultivars of tea that are used in production. Broadly, cultivars are plants that have been selected and propagated by humans because they possess certain desirable traits, like surviving rapid weather changes. Given that the Chinese first documented the drinking of tea in 2737 B.C.E. and the first tea plantations are mentioned in 1000 B.C.E., there has been ample time for humans to intervene and cultivate the tea plants with the characteristics they want.

There are several differences between the assamica and sinensis varieties. Assamica has larger leaves, can handle the lower elevations and harsher sun better than sinensis. Both varieties prefer humidity, well-drained soil, and at least 50 inches of rain a year. This means that the plant grows best in tropical and sub-tropical climates. Some C. sinensis cultivars can handle temperatures below 54 degrees Fahrenheit, but neither can handle prolonged exposure to temperatures at or below freezing. For ease of harvesting both varieties are kept in low hedge like shape by most plantations. However, if left unkempt the sinensis variety has been recorded as turning into a tree as high as 50 feet; the same height as a mature willow tree. C. sinensis var. sinensis are mainly found in China, Japan, and Taiwan. C. sinensis var. assamica are found in India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Kenya and Argentina.

Tea Tree by Mt. Fudo by STA3816, CC BY-SA 2.0

Various pests cause problems for C. Sinensis, like caterpillars and moths, though not all pests are bad. For example, harvesting it after an infestation of leaf hoppers, a small green grasshopper like insect, produces a very fragrant tea. Some of the most highly-prized oolongs, especially from Taiwan, are created from tea leaves that have been recently munched on by the leaf hoppers. By biting the leaves, the leaf hopper causes the plant to produce different enzymes that ultimately create the complex flavors in these oolongs. It is also worth noting that, like other plants, C. sinensis produces caffeine, as a defense mechanism against insects such that it often is grown in near organic conditions by default.

The amount of rain, temperature and soil affect the favor of the final tea product that we consume. In general, the better tasting, more complex teas are grown at higher elevations because the growing seasons are shorter. The length of a growing season is determined by the right mix of water, sun light and temperature that the plant needs to sprout to new growth. If that is not present all the time, the plant goes dormant, allowing it to store up energy for when the conditions are right for growth again. The “energy” comes from the organic chemicals found inside the leaves. It is these organic chemicals that produce the flavor of the tea. At lower elevations, the growing seasons are longer, and in some places, like Kenya, are year round, which does not give the plant a chance to rest.

Tea 'Camellia Sinensis' Plantation in Sri Lanka

Tea Plantation, Sri Lanka – by By Purblind – Flickr
CC BY-SA 2.0

Camellia Sinensis and Climate Change

Lastly, it should be noted that many of the tea producing nations are worried about the effects of climate change on tea. The Kenyan Tea Board is working with local tea farmers to improve water storage and soil conservation measures while also researching the use of drought resistant cultivars of tea to mitigate the effects_{(The Tea Board of Kenya, 2012)}. The Tocklai tea experimental station in the Assam region of India, which has recorded the temperature and rainfall for over 100 years, has reported an increase in the temperature and a decrease in rain, affecting tea yields and quality of that tea. The drop in yields has not really been seen on the market as more small farmers have entered into growing tea, which has off-set the drop, but the Tea Research Association expects the effects to surface soon_{(Das, 2013)}. Given the importance of C.sinensis to many cultures on this planet I suspect we will see cultivars that can keep producing in extreme weather conditions. I can only hope the taste of this wonderful plant is not lost in the process of preserving it.

Works Cited

Das, B. (2013, September 9). Climate Change Dries Up India Tea Production. Retrieved from Aljeezera: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2013/09/201398144844505310.html

Harvard University. (2013, November 1). www.efloras.org. Retrieved from Floras.org: http://www.efloras.org/florataxon.aspx?flora_id=2&taxon_id=200014043

The Tea Board of Kenya. (2012, January 16). News – 2012: Responding to Climate Change. Retrieved from The Tea Board of Kenya: http://www.teaboard.or.ke/news/2012/13jan2012-c.html